Transcript of Pat Buchanan's Acceptance Speech

Pat Buchanan, the presidential nominee of one faction of the warring Reform Party, accepted his nomination in Long Beach, Calif., tonight. Read a transcript of his remarks here.

Pat Buchanan:

Thank you: And I accept your nomination for president of the United States, and pledge you a fight you can be proud of the rest of your lives.

For years, my friends, we have all heard that familiar taunt: “Don’t worry about them; they have nowhere else to go.”

Well, guess what? We have somewhere else to go. At long last, we have a
home of our own. As for those homeless conservatives, who were locked up in the basement at the big Bush Family Reunion in Philadelphia, all I can say is: “Folks, come on over; there is plenty of room in Reform.”

Say, did any of you watch that convention? How did you stand the excitement? One Republican governor defended it this way: “We used to have red-meat conventions, but they frightened people away. So, we’re all vegetarians now.” Well, welcome to the last red-meat convention in America.

First, I don’t disagree with the Republicans who say we have much to be thankful for here in America. In science, technology and medicine, we excel as no other people in history. I know that. I was at Cape Canaveral when Apollo 11 lifted off on its way to the moon. I am alive today because of a heart valve that did not exist when I was in high school. I was at Ronald Reagan’s side in
Reykjavik in that critical summit of the Cold War when that great and good man refused to give up a missile defense for his country. Because of Ronald Reagan, our world is safer and freer than the world we grew up in, and America today is as dominant as Rome in her day.

But beneath our surface prosperity, there is deep anxiety, a foreboding within our people that was ignored at the festival in Philadelphia. It revolves around these questions: Where are we going? How are we Americans using all this wealth, power, and freedom? Are we still God’s country? What about the forgotten Americans of Philadelphia?

I mean America’s unborn children, another million of whom will die this year without ever seeing the light of day. For these lost innocents, there was barely a word of compassion from the party of compassionate conservatism.

Well, Republicans may be running away from life, but as long as there is
life left in me, I will never run away — because their cause is my
cause, and their cause is God’s cause.

Now, let us speak of some of the other forgotten Americans at Philadelphia. I began my campaign, 18 months ago, in a tiny steel town in West Virginia called Weirton. Even though the U.S. economy was booming and U.S. companies were crying out for steel, Weirton steel was laying off workers, and Weirton was dying. Why? Because cheap steel was being dumped into the United States from Russia, Korea, Brazil, and Indonesia so those bankrupt regimes could raise
the cash to pay off the international banks. The workers of Weirton and their families were being betrayed by Bill Clinton and sacrificed to the gods of the global economy. I told those steel workers we would stand with them; and in one of the prouder moments of my life, that union endorsed me and joined our cause. Just the other day, working together, the Buchanan Brigades, the Reform
Party, and the union folks of Weirton, achieved ballot access in
the Mountaineer State of West Virginia.

Let me tonight lay out the great issues where our new Reform
Party stands apart from both Beltway parties.

Last year, at the close of Clinton’s war, I was given a small
party by Serb-Americans who wanted to thank me for opposing the
war. They told me of a woman who had desperately wanted to be
there, but was not, because she had to go back to Serbia to bury
her parents, who had been killed in the American bombing. Mr. Bush
said his only complaint about that war on Serbia was that we did
not fight it “ferociously enough.” Mr. Bush, tell that to that
Serb-American woman who lost her mother and father.

Why did we do this? Why did we bomb this little country for 78
days when it never threatened or attacked the United States?

Yes, there was a nasty guerrilla war going on in Kosovo, with
terrorist attacks on Serb soldiers by the KLA, and ugly reprisals.
But in one year, there had been 2000 casualties on all sides. Yet,
look at the disaster we wrought, after Clinton launched his war.
Thousands dead, a million Albanians driven out of their homes; now,
a quarter million Serbs ethnically cleansed in KLA counter-terror.
Serbia is smashed. Kosovo is destroyed. Russia has been driven into
the arms of China; and American troops are tied down in a Balkan
peninsula that has nothing to do with the vital interests of the
United States.

My friends, I count myself a patriot. I love this country. But
what in God’s name are we doing? Milosevic is a thug and a tyrant.
But that is not his country we destroyed. That is their country;
and the Serb people have always been friends of the United States.

Saddam Hussein is another wicked tyrant who has launched
aggressive war and murdered his own people. But who has killed more
innocent Iraqis? Saddam Hussein, or U.S. sanctions? When Madeleine
Albright was told on a television show that a U.N. study had found
that 500,000 Iraqi children may have died because of our 10 years
of sanctions, Albright said: “We believe it was worth it.” Worth
it? When did the greatest nation on Earth start waging war on
children?

After Mr. Clinton launched one of his drive-by shootings with
cruise missiles, Ms. Albright was asked to justify it. “If we have
to use force,” she said, “it is because we are America. We are
the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see farther into the
future.”

Talk about the arrogance of power. George III could not have
said it better. Friends, I am ashamed to say it, but we have begun
to behave like the haughty British empire our fathers rose up
against and threw out of this country. That, then, is what our
party, our campaign, and our cause are all about. We are Americans
who say with our fathers: To hell with empire; we want our country
back.

Yet, both Beltway parties today conspire to kill our beloved
republic. Both colluded to create the WTO. Both voted $18 billion
more for the IMF to make the world safe for Goldman Sachs. Last
year, a new U.N. international war crimes tribunal was established
with the power to arrest and prosecute our soldiers. This year,
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan thundered that we Americans do
not pay our fair share of foreign aid. Last fall, the most trusted
man in America, Walter Cronkite, said Americans must have the
courage to surrender their national sovereignty to a world
government. Let me tell you where the Reform Party stands.

We believe “independence forever.” We will reclaim every lost
ounce of American sovereignty. We will lead this country out of the
WTO, out of the IMF, and I will personally tell Kofi Annan: Your
U.N. lease has run out; you will be moving out of the United
States, and if you are not gone by year’s end, I will send you
10,000 Marines to help you pack your bags.

Friends, I am called many names. Isolationist is one of the
sweeter ones. But the truth is: We are not isolationists. We do not
want to isolate America from the world. We Americans come from all
countries and continents, and want to trade with and travel with
all countries, and have commercial, cultural, and diplomatic
contact with every nation on earth. But we will no longer squander
the blood of our soldiers fighting other countries’ wars or the
wealth of our people paying other countries’ bills. The Cold War is
over; it is time to bring America’s troops home to the United
States where they belong — and end foreign aid. And when I step out
on that inaugural stand to take the oath — when my hand goes up,
their New World Order comes crashing down.

Bill Clinton understands this issue of sovereignty. Al Gore, he
understands it. George W., he doesn’t understand it; but, don’t
worry, he is still being home-schooled by Condoleeza Rice. We are
the one party with a chance to win that is sworn to fight world
government abroad — and big government at home.

Yet, look at the record of this Congress that has the nerve to
call itself conservative. In two years, not one federal agency has
been abolished, not one program ended. Federal spending is rising
at the fastest rate since “Tip” O’Neill was speaker of the House. Both parties are so steeped in pork they have to be checked every
six months for trichinosis.

Here are a couple of items from our $2 trillion federal budget:
$500,000 for a study of swine waste management, $1.75 million to
study the handling and distribution of manure. Do these guys have
enough sense to cross the street? Apparently not, because this year
Congress voted $1 million for a study in Utah on — you guessed it — how to cross the street. My friends, it is time to pick up the
pitchforks and go down and clean out the pigpen. If you want real
reform, vote Reform.

Back in 1991, I challenged a president named Bush because he
broke a pledge not to raise taxes. He said he had to do it to
balance the budget. Bill Clinton raised taxes again, he said, to
balance the budget. Well, the budget is balanced; and it is time to
repeal both the Clinton tax hike and the Bush tax hike and give the
surpluses back to the people — because that money does not belong
to the politicians; it belongs to the people; and I will give it
all back. Here is how:

We will eliminate all death taxes and end the government’s role
as federal grave robber of the American family. We will end the
marriage penalty and cut income taxes for all Americans. And we
will impose a 10 percent tariff on imports, and use the money to
end all taxes on small businesses. And we will chop down the IRS
until it is so small all the IRS agents will fit into the building
that is being vacated by the National Endowment for the Arts.

As for Communist China, we will no longer accept one-sided trade
deals, where we buy 40 percent of their exports and they buy 1
percent of ours. And I will tell them: Fellas, either you stop this
persecution of Christians, and these threats to our friends on
Taiwan, and rattling missiles at the United States, or you fellows
have sold your last pair of chopsticks in any mall in the United
States of America.

Let me speak now about the great issue of civil rights. I knew
the old leaders of that movement, and while I did not always agree
with their tactics, I respected them. But today’s agenda has
nothing to do with civil rights, and everything to do with special
privileges. No discrimination means to me: no discrimination; not
against anyone because of color or creed; not in favor of anyone
because of color or creed. And when we get to the White House, all
discrimination ends: No more racial profiling and no more racial
preferences. Men and women will be advanced by the standards we use
to choose our American Olympic team: merit, character, ability, and
excellence alone.

Up at Philadelphia, did you hear Mr. McCain denounce those who
want to reform our immigration laws by saying that walls are for
cowards? Well, let me tell the senator a story about a woman who
lives in his own home state. Her name Is Teresa Murray. She is 82,
has arthritis, and lives in Douglas, on the border. When I visited
her ranch last winter, she was confined to her home. Around her
small house is a chain-link fence. On top of that fence sits rolled
razor wire. Every door and window of her home had bars on it, and
Ms. Murray’s two guard dogs are dead, killed by thugs who threw
meat over the fence with cut glass in it. She sleeps with a gun on
her bed table because she has been burglarized 30 times. Senator
McCain, go down to Douglas and tell Teresa Murray that fences are
for cowards.

Teresa Murray is an American woman living out her life in a
maximum security prison in her own home in her own country — because of the real cowardice, the cowardice of politicians who
refuse to do their duty and defend the borders of the United
States. I am tired of reading about U.S. troops defending the
borders of Kosovo, Kuwait, and Korea. I don’t live in Kosovo,
Kuwait or Korea; I live in the United States of America. And when I
become president, all U.S. troops will come home from Kosovo,
Kuwait and Korea; and I will put them on the borders of Arizona,
Texas and California; and we will start putting America first.

But we will never restore a republic unless we replace the
“commissars” of the U.S. Supreme Court, those unelected judges,
appointed for life, who answer to no one, and who have begun to
erect a judicial dictatorship in America.

In New Hampshire, judges created chaos in the public schools by
throwing out a financing system that worked for generations. In
Arizona, a federal judge told the people they cannot make English
the language for state business. In California, Proposition 187, to
cut off welfare to illegal aliens, supported in a landslide, was
thrown out by one judge. Last year, the state of Ohio was told to
sandblast its motto, “With God, all things are possible,” off
state buildings—because those are words of Jesus Christ; and His
words do not belong on state buildings in Bill Clinton’s America.

Mr. Bush holds up his hands and he has no litmus test for the
Supreme Court.

Well, I do. When Supreme Court vacancies open up, only
constitutionalists who respect the inalienable right of life of all
Americans and our religious heritage will be nominated — and no
liberal judicial activists need apply.

Let me turn now to the signature issue of the Bush campaign:
education. Mr. Bush is so enthusiastic about it, he gets carried
away. He told a baffled audience in Florence, South Carolina, and I
quote directly: “Rarely has the question asked: Is our children
learning?” Is our children learning?

Well, our children is certainly not learning in Texas, governor.
Like Mr. Gore, Mr. Bush believes the solution to the education
crisis lies in expanding the power of the Department of Education.
We believe differently: We believe the Department of Education is
the problem; and the solution to the education crisis is to get God
and the Ten Commandments and discipline back into the public
schools, and the federal bureaucrats and federal judges out, and to
shut down the Department of Education, and let the building sit
there as a monument to the failure and folly of big government. If
you want reform, vote Reform.

The Democratic Party will never reform education because it is
held hostage by the teachers’ unions. Republicans will never shut
down the IMF, because if they did, the corporate lobbyists would
cut off their room, board, tuition, beer and gas money. Neither
Beltway party will drain this political swamp, because to them it
is not a swamp; it is a protected wetland, their natural habitat.
They swim in it, feed in it, spawn in it and are as happy there as
Brer Rabbit was in his briar patch.

The Reform Party can reform American politics, because no one
has a hook in us. And I give you my word: We will outlaw the
glorified bribery they call “soft money” and put term limits on
every member of Congress and federal judge. If eight years was
enough for George Washington and Ronald Reagan, it is long enough
for Teddy Kennedy and Barney Frank.

Friends, let me tell you about the man who stands before you
tonight. Forty years ago, when I was trying to figure out what to
do with my life, I read a line by Justice Holmes. A man, he said,
must share the action and passion of his time, at peril of being
judged not to have lived. So I have, and it has been a wonderful
life.

I was a few feet away from Martin Luther King when he gave his
“I have a dream” address at the Lincoln Memorial. I was in
Philadelphia, Mississippi, before they pulled the bodies of those
civil rights workers out of that earthen dam. I was in the Conrad
Hilton Hotel in 1968 when the Democratic Party came apart in the
streets of Chicago. I was with Nixon in China, and Reagan at
Reykjavik. I have served in three White Houses and seen presidents
in their finest hours, and their darkest hours — Nixon in
Watergate, Reagan in Iran-Contra. I have something to give to my
country, and that brings me to recall a moment in my life.

It was 1964, and I had gone up to see my oldest brother, Bill,
at the Maryknoll seminary in Ossining, New York. In the prime of
his youth, he had joined this mission order. I asked him why he did
it. He told me: God has been good to our family and we have to give
something back. My brother Bill is gone now; but his words haunt me
still: God has been good to our family, and we have to give
something back. That is why we are here: to create something new
and good and alive, and give something back to this country, that
has been so good to all of us.

The road to Long Beach has been long and hard, harder at times
than we thought it would be. In this room are men and women who
have worked from dawn to dark and beyond, in malls, gas stations,
and country stores, in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma,
West Virginia, to get a million signatures to get us on the ballot.
It is a tribute to your dedication and loyalty that we have not
missed a single state. This fall, we shall go into battle in all 50
states.

“But why are you doing this?” people ask me. I will tell you.
Because there has to be one party that has not sold its soul for
soft money. There has to be one party that will stand up for our
sovereignty and stand by our workers who are being sacrificed on
the altar of the global economy. There has to be one party that
will defend America’s history, heritage and heroes against the
Visigoths and Vandals of multiculturalism. There has to be one
party willing to drive the money-changers out of the temples of our
civilization.

What are we fighting for? To save our country from being sold
down the river into some godless New World Order, and to hand down
to our children a nation as good and as great as the one our
parents gave to us — forever independent, forever free. Thats what
this Gideon’s Army is fighting for; and we will fight on and on and
on and on — until God Himself calls us home.